John Henning Schumann

John Henning Schumann, M.D., is an internal medicine physician and writer (http://glasshospital.com). He has contributed to Slate, The Atlantic, Marketplace, and National Public Radio’s health blog, Shots.

Schumann serves as guest host for Studio Tulsa on health-related themes and is also host of Medical Matters on KWGS, an occasional series about health care and the human condition.

He was appointed Interim President of the University of Oklahoma – Tulsa in January 2015. You can find him on twitter @GlassHospital.

For years, Mrs. Sutton came to see me in the office every three months. Visiting the doctor quarterly was "the right thing to do," she told me, given the fact that she had both diabetes and high blood pressure.

She always set the agenda at our visits. She brought lists of questions and requests that followed the recommendations of her fellow churchgoers and the health materials she had read.

Oscar buzz surrounds Julianne Moore for her role as Alice Howland in the film Still Alice. Howland is a linguistics professor who develops early-onset Alzheimer's, a cruel irony for a character who makes her living with her brain.

Howland's awareness of her fate makes her decline all the more painful to watch.

Often, though, patients and their doctors can be slow to recognize dementia, which most often progresses gradually.

Doctors are no different. Even for a profession that prides itself on scientific proof, the long nights of December afford ample opportunity for reflection and even doubt.

As we take stock of what we've accomplished and where we've failed to measure up, I find my scowling mask of medical skepticism falling away. I have to admit that there is so much wonder and mystery that science and medicine still can't explain.

The idea is that cooking, nutrition and eating should be intentional, mindful and substantive. Avoid fast food and highly processed grub. For the slow food set, the process is as important as the product.

Now I'm seeing a medical version of slow food. The concept is bubbling up in response to industrialized, hypertechnological and often unnecessary medical care that drives up costs and leaves both doctors and patients frazzled.